WKS KV Bildung Digitizes Its Communication Channels
The Corona crisis has created challenges for many education organizations: Remote teaching, technical rearrangements, work away from the classroom, and difficult communication due to the home office situation. WKS KV Bildung in Bern therefore converted its operations over to digital and made its nearly 600 teachers, instructors and employees accessible via MS Teams.
#Unified Communications #Microsoft Teams Collaboration #Microsoft Teams TelephonySending more than 5,000 students and course participants to remote classes in one fell swoop and completely changing the schedule was a major logistical and technical challenge. Although the lessons could be quickly converted to remote using the online meeting and webinar services of Microsoft Teams, it was a challenge to reach all employees via their landlines. These lines had to be rerouted without having to publish private numbers.
Complementing Atos Unify OpenScape with MS Teams
UMB AG has been supporting WKS KV Bildung for years regarding the existing voice solution from Atos Unify. The new solution includes 200 fixed network numbers with soft clients, desk phones or DECT phones. In addition to the employee workstations, the Atos Unify solution is used to serve the central office, secretarial offices, info desk and evacuation. A complete replacement of the Atos Unify system was not an option: the voice solution workes perfectly and is ideal for regular school operations.
«We still wanted to rely on our Atos Unify solution - also in view of the fact that it is not an Internet-based solution. It therefore continues to run even if the Internet connection should go down», explains André Huwiler, CTO of WKS KV Bildung. Christoph Baumgartner, Sales Consultant at UMB AG, explains: «A combination between the existing voice solution from Atos Unify with Teams from Microsoft was appropriate: An interface between the two solutions ensures interoperability. Implementation is quick and cost-effective for the customer, and usability is self-explanatory.» Employees can use it to switch their phones entirely to MS Teams and make calls via the app on their cell phone or desktop. As soon as they return from the home office, they can decide for themselves how they want to be reached in the future: Via their landline phone from Atos Unify or exclusively via MS Teams.
Two systems, connected by one interface
The combination of both solutions pays off: WKS KV Bildung did not have to decide for one system and against the other, but benefits from the advantages of both. The concept worked out perfectly, the interface was established by a so-called Session Border Controller (SBC) from AudioCodes. For WKS KV Bildung, MS Teams has become so important that a redundant expansion of the controller is being implemented as a further project with UMB AG.
With this solution, WKS KV Bildung enjoys the best of both worlds of modern IP telephony: the local stable Atos Unify solution ensures communication in critical areas, while the agile MS Teams solution enables a flexible workplace 4.0. Whether in the home office or on site: WKS KV Bildung is equipped for the future of communication.
With the connection of Atos Unify OpenScape to MS Teams, which can now be used for telephoning via app, UMB has found the perfect solution for us, so that our employees can make calls from anywhere with their personal WKS number.
WKS KV Bildung
From theory to practice and back again: WKS KV Education guarantees high-quality, stable knowledge transfer that also takes the dynamic developments on the education market into account. Nearly 600 employees, teachers and instructors of WKS supervise more than 330 classes with over 5,000 participants. The IT team consists of six employees who look after 350 PC workstations.
Further information can be found at: www.wksbern.ch
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